Greenwood Fire Chief Stewart Bryan said he was alerted about the fire on Fowler Street through a cellphone call from a county dispatcher.

Chief Deputy Mike Blevins, of the Sebastian County Sheriff's Office, said the automatic paging system was down early Wednesday morning.

Assistant County Administrator Jeff Turner said the county backup system was also down early Wednesday morning.

Bryan said he was unaware that the main paging system and the backup system were not working.

"It definitely impacted response time because every minute counts," said Bryan.

Bryan said because the main system and the backup system was down, he was forced to text, call and stop by the homes of firefighters to get them to respond to the house fire.

"I have 35 firefighters, and that's a lot of people to call. I was even stopping by the homes of firefighters on the way and banging on their doors to get them to the fire," said Bryan.

Bryan said the problems with both paging systems being down slowing response time by 15 to 20 minutes.

Officials said the main system is being operated by the Sebastian County Sheriff's Office while the backup rural fire notification system is being run by the County Judges' Office.

Officials said both systems alert rural firefighters through a paging system that an emergency is in progress and tells them where to respond.

Turner said it's not desirable to have both systems down at the same time.

"You never want that to happen," said Turner.

Turner said the systems were down because of new equipment being installed and because of maintenance issues. He said he wasn't sure whether or not communication was made alerting both dispatchers and county officials that both the main system and the backup were down.

Blevins said at about 3:45 p.m. Wednesday, the main system was back up and running and had been tested.